Our View: Another Downtown Development Commission

Thursday

For about a decade covering both sides of the turn of the 21st century, Peoria had a Riverfront Business District Commission tasked with overseeing the reinvention of the city’s waterfront Downtown.

The years 1994 to 2004 were an exciting, optimistic time for that part of the city, producing a flurry of investment and activity that began under the direction of banker Leonard Marshall and continued with Caterpillar executive Jim Baldwin, two very strong personalities that sometimes ruffled local feathers — including those on the Peoria City Council, on occasion — but got a lot done in a relatively short time. Arguably some mistakes were made along the way, things did not always go smoothly, but on balance Peoria’s RiverFront — though undone and still evolving — is one of the public-private partnership success stories in a community that has not had an abundance of them, especially for those of us who remember the before and can compare it to the after.

It is with that memory in mind that we generally support the concept of a Downtown Development Commission in Peoria, as championed by Mayor Jim Ardis in his annual State of the City speech this past week.

Oh, there are some differences, as this commission would not be an appendage of City Hall but an “autonomous,” not-for-profit liason — with some public funding, to be sure — between developers and city leaders. Its specific assignment is the Warehouse District and Downtown, with likely an emphasis on the Main Street corridor that is showing signs of new life.

Whether Peoria is the largest community in America without one of these, as the mayor maintains, we don’t know and have our doubts, but we get the reasons behind it. The City Council has a lot on its platter, and there is something to be said for an organization that can focus exclusively on envisioning, growing and promoting a defined location and acting as a one-stop-shop and private/public go-between to make things happen with as little hassle as possible.

This model is not unprecedented locally. Forget the Riverfront Commission for a moment. Once upon a time — the ‘60s through the ‘80s — Peoria had a Downtown Development Council that, under the leadership of now-retired banker David Connor, state Rep. David Leitch, former Mayor Dick Carver, late local businessman Lew Burger, etc., had a very large hand in giving Peoria the Downtown it has today, including the Peoria Civic Center, with central Illinois the better for it.

That said, some cautions here after watching these organizations in action over several decades.

This 15-member board will be appointed by the various major players in town — with the city getting three picks, Caterpillar two, the two local hospitals one each, and the county one, with the resulting group selecting the remaining at-large directors. The mix of personalities here is critical. We do find it odd that, according to the group’s blossoming by-laws, “directors need not be residents of Illinois.” Huh?

The new Downtown Development Commission may “serve as the leading organization that champions, guides and sustains development in Downtown Peoria,” but it is not the City Council, and where taxpayer dollars may be concerned, the elected officials must still call the shots. We’ve witnessed tension on this front before, then things start to unravel and the progress comes to a halt. Everybody involved should know in advance what the roles and boundaries are.

Transparency can be an issue. Repeatedly in Peoria we have seen the failure to fully appreciate this, with some major projects — from the struggling museum to the creation of a new regional economic development agency — hobbled as a result. Often those in charge insist that they must do their business behind closed doors, and then they act surprised when the locals whose money they are sometimes spending stubbornly refuse to embrace their efforts. Let us hope that the public relations instincts are the right ones this time. By the way, to the extent this organization exists to act on behalf of and for Peorians, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to actually ask Peorians what they’d like their Downtown to be and look like — to involve them up front — instead of just assuming to know what they want and then having to deal with the fallout after the fact.

Finally, the city has something of a checkered history in this department. The Heart of Peoria Commission succeeded the Riverfront Business District Commission, and it didn’t last long after the city spent a goodly amount of money bringing an out-of-state consultant here to get everybody’s hopes up, only to see it largely go for naught. Over the years, follow-through has been a problem in Peoria. To the degree that has become a pattern, may it be broken now.

Ultimately, Peoria’s Downtown does lack ... something. There are some promising developments — in the Warehouse District, with the hotel development on Main, with talk of resurrecting the Madison Theater — but Downtown lacks the critical mass that puts people on the sidewalks and gives the place an energy. Good luck to all involved.

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